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02/16/2014

The Web Brigades -- Original Version

For various reasons, I worry that this apparently original version of an excellent essay on Web Brigades might be erased or deleted by over-zealous sectarian Wikipedia mods, and so I'm re-printing it here.

I'm not sure it's the original version, but it's a version of the article "at a certain date" as the author says.

That is, this version of the article is preserved here on that user page (you'll see what I mean in the next post).

I don't know Elysander but I stumbled on them because a Twitter account commenting on something I said about Snowden had this URL in their profile. I get bombarded by so many hecklers that even well-meaning people can get lost in the shuffle so now I can't find them again.

I'm including the German here, even though I don't know what it says -- Elysander may be German (or Russian-German -- they have Russian text also on the user page). Someone can tell me.

It's a really great list of not only how the pro-Putin/Nashi/United Russia/FSB supported Internet hecklers behave -- their repertoire, after all, came from the Leninists in the KGB -- but of how in general, WikiLeaks, hackers, anarchists, Anonymous behave (Occupy, too, although they are a special sectarian case with their own weirdness like the "general assembly" and the hand waving stuff).

Now stay tuned to the next post, which shows you this topic in its present form...

They described organized and professional "brigades", composed of ideologically and methodologically identical personalities, who were working in practically every popular liberal and pro-democracy Internet forums and Internet newspapers of RuNet.

The activity of Internet teams appeared in 1999 and were organized by the Russian state security service, according to Polyanskaya. [3][2] According to authors, about 70% of audience of Russian Internet were people of generally liberal views prior to 1998–1999, however sudden surge (about 60-80%) of "antidemocratic" posts suddenly occurred at many Russian forums in 2000.

Views

According to Polyanskaya and her colleagues, the behavior of people from the web brigades has distinct features, some of which are the following:[2]

Any change in Moscow's agenda leads to immediate changes in the brigade's opinions.

Nostalgia for the Soviet Union and propaganda of the Communist ideology, and constant attempts to present in a positive light the entire history of Russia and the Soviet Union, minimizing the number of people who died in repressions.[2]

Emigrants are accused of being traitors of the motherland. Some members will claim that they live in some Western country and tell stories about how much better life is in Putin's Russia.

Before the Iraq War, the brigade's anti-U.S. operations reached unseen scale. The original publication describes: "it sometimes seemed that the U.S. was not liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein, but at a minimum had actually launched an attack on Russia and was marching on the Kremlin." However, it fell silent suddenly after Putin announced that Russia was not opposed to the victory of the coalition forces in Iraq.[2]

Tactics

Round-the-clock presence on forums. At least one of the uniform members of the team can be found online at all times, always ready to repulse any “attack” by a liberal.[2]

Intentional diversion of pointed discussions. For instance, the brigade may claim that Pol Pot never had any connection with Communism or that not a single person was killed in Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 by Soviet tanks.

Individual work on opponents. "As soon as an opposition-minded liberal arrives on a forum, expressing a position that makes them a clear "ideological enemy”, he is immediately cornered and subjected to “active measures” by the unified web-brigade. Without provocation, the opponent is piled on with abuse or vicious “arguments” of the sort that the average person cannot adequately react to. As a result, the liberal either answers sharply, causing a scandal and getting himself labeled a “boor” by the rest of the brigade, or else he starts to make arguments against the obvious absurdities, to which his opponents pay no attention, but simply ridicule him and put forth other similar arguments."[2]

Making personally offensive comments. Tendency to accuse their opponents of being insane during arguments.

Remarkable ability to reveal personal information about their opponents and their quotes from old postings, sometimes more than a year old.

Teamwork. "They unwaveringly support each other in discussions, ask each other leading questions, put fine points on each other’s answers, and even pretend not to know each other. If an opponent starts to be hounded, this hounding invariably becomes a team effort, involving all of the three to twenty nicknames that invariably are present on any political forum 24 hours a day."[2]

Appealing to the Administration. The members of teams often "write mass collective complaints about their opponents to the editors, site administrators, or the electronic “complaints book”, demanding that one or another posting or whole discussion thread they don’t like be removed, or calling for the banning of individuals they find problematic."[2]

Destruction of inconvenient forums. For example, on the site of the Moscow News, all critics of Putin and the FSB "were suddenly and without any explanation banned from all discussions, despite their having broken none of the site’s rules of conduct. All the postings of this group of readers, going back a year and a half, were erased by the site administrator."[2]

Criticism

There is difference between "dislike of hegemonic policy of the United States" at Russian forums and "quite friendly attitude towards usual Americans". Aggression and xenophobia doesn't characterize one side but is a common place of polemics, well met not only among Russian patriots, but among Russian emigrants from US, Israel, or other countries as well.

Change of attitude of virtual masses in 1998-1999 could be caused by Russian financial collapse which "crowned liberal decade", rather than "mysterious bad guys".

Authors exclude from their interpretation of events all other hypotheses, such as internet activity of a group of some "skinheads", nazbols; or hackers able to get IP addresses of their opponents.

Officeers of GRU or FSB have more topical problems, than "comparing virtual penises" with liberals and emigrants.[9]Yusupovskiy concluded that

"We would never make our country's military organizations and security services work under the rule of law and legal control, if won't learn to recognize rationally and objectively their necessity and usefulness for the country, state, society and citizens. Sweeping defamation and intentional discreditation with the help of "arguments", which are obviously false, only contribute to the extrusion of security services outside of rule of law and instigates them to chaos".[9]

Paul Goble, director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, claims "the Kremlin has dispatched its own “agents of influence” to political forums on the Internet both to portray itself as having more support than it has and to suggest that its opponents who would like to see a more democratic Russia with closer ties to the West are an ever more marginal group"[11]

Public perception in Russia

In 2007 sociological analysis of big groups in Russian society published at Russian resource RIO-Center, it's mentioned that idea of existence of web-brigades is a widespread conspiracy theory in RuNet. Authors say "it's difficult to say whether hypothesis of existence of web-brigades corresponds to reality", "web brigades are conspiracy theory" but acknowledge that the users profess views on the existence of "web-brigades". [12]

"We are losing in the Internet in that respect. It is always easier to break down things than to do something positive. What you are doing are jokes and minor infractions. Not only methods, but also goals must be radical. We must blow this romantics out of them [our opponents]. It is important not only to protect the authorities - this is understood, but we need to attract young people who can work creatively in the Internet. This is an important communication place of young people. Make them interested in conversations with you."[14]

Internet brigades in Russian literature

The alleged FSB activities on the Internet have been described in the short story "Anastasya" by Russian writer Grigory Svirsky, who was interested in the moral aspects of their work.[15] He wrote: "It seems that offending, betraying, or even "murdering" people in the virtual space is easy. This is like killing an enemy in a video game: one does not see a disfigured body or the eyes of the person who is dying right in front of you. However, the human soul lives by its own basic laws that force it to pay the price for the virtual crime in his real life".[3]

Outside Russia

Russian brigades in the Polish Internet

Russian "Internet brigades" reportedly appeared in Poland in 2005. According to claims of anonymous "Polish experts on Russian affairs", reported by the Polish newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny, "at least a dozen active Russian agents work in Poland, also investigating the Polish Internet. They are claimed to scrutinize Polish websites (like those supporting Belarusian opposition), and also to perform such actions, as—for instance—contributing to Internet forums on large portals (like Gazeta.pl, Onet.pl, WP.pl). Labeled as Polish Internet users, they incite anti-Semitic or anti-Ukrainian discussions or disavow articles published on the web."[16]

Internet propaganda teams in mainland China

It has been reported[1] that in 2005, departments of provincial and municipal governments in mainland China began creating teams of Internet commentators from propaganda and police departments and offering them classes in Marxism, propaganda techniques, and the Internet. They are reported to guide discussion on public bulletin boards away from politically sensitive topics by posting opinions anonymously or under false names. "They are actually hiring staff to curse online", said Liu Di, a Chinese student who was arrested for posting her comments in blogs.

Netherlands

It was reported that Dutch police have set up an Internet Brigade to fight cybercrime. Among its planned actions are to infiltrate internet newsgroups and discussion forums for intelligence gathering, to make pseudo-purchase and to provide services.[17].

Internet brigades in Wikipedia?

A number of publications suggested that intelligence agents may have infiltrated Wikipedia to remove undesirable information [18] The design and application of WikiScanner technology proved such suspicions to be well founded, although it remains unknown how many agents from around the world operate in Wikipedia [19][20][21][22][23]

Comments

The Web Brigades -- Original Version

For various reasons, I worry that this apparently original version of an excellent essay on Web Brigades might be erased or deleted by over-zealous sectarian Wikipedia mods, and so I'm re-printing it here.

I'm not sure it's the original version, but it's a version of the article "at a certain date" as the author says.

That is, this version of the article is preserved here on that user page (you'll see what I mean in the next post).

I don't know Elysander but I stumbled on them because a Twitter account commenting on something I said about Snowden had this URL in their profile. I get bombarded by so many hecklers that even well-meaning people can get lost in the shuffle so now I can't find them again.

I'm including the German here, even though I don't know what it says -- Elysander may be German (or Russian-German -- they have Russian text also on the user page). Someone can tell me.

It's a really great list of not only how the pro-Putin/Nashi/United Russia/FSB supported Internet hecklers behave -- their repertoire, after all, came from the Leninists in the KGB -- but of how in general, WikiLeaks, hackers, anarchists, Anonymous behave (Occupy, too, although they are a special sectarian case with their own weirdness like the "general assembly" and the hand waving stuff).

Now stay tuned to the next post, which shows you this topic in its present form...

They described organized and professional "brigades", composed of ideologically and methodologically identical personalities, who were working in practically every popular liberal and pro-democracy Internet forums and Internet newspapers of RuNet.

The activity of Internet teams appeared in 1999 and were organized by the Russian state security service, according to Polyanskaya. [3][2] According to authors, about 70% of audience of Russian Internet were people of generally liberal views prior to 1998–1999, however sudden surge (about 60-80%) of "antidemocratic" posts suddenly occurred at many Russian forums in 2000.

Views

According to Polyanskaya and her colleagues, the behavior of people from the web brigades has distinct features, some of which are the following:[2]

Any change in Moscow's agenda leads to immediate changes in the brigade's opinions.

Nostalgia for the Soviet Union and propaganda of the Communist ideology, and constant attempts to present in a positive light the entire history of Russia and the Soviet Union, minimizing the number of people who died in repressions.[2]

Emigrants are accused of being traitors of the motherland. Some members will claim that they live in some Western country and tell stories about how much better life is in Putin's Russia.

Before the Iraq War, the brigade's anti-U.S. operations reached unseen scale. The original publication describes: "it sometimes seemed that the U.S. was not liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein, but at a minimum had actually launched an attack on Russia and was marching on the Kremlin." However, it fell silent suddenly after Putin announced that Russia was not opposed to the victory of the coalition forces in Iraq.[2]

Tactics

Round-the-clock presence on forums. At least one of the uniform members of the team can be found online at all times, always ready to repulse any “attack” by a liberal.[2]

Intentional diversion of pointed discussions. For instance, the brigade may claim that Pol Pot never had any connection with Communism or that not a single person was killed in Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 by Soviet tanks.

Individual work on opponents. "As soon as an opposition-minded liberal arrives on a forum, expressing a position that makes them a clear "ideological enemy”, he is immediately cornered and subjected to “active measures” by the unified web-brigade. Without provocation, the opponent is piled on with abuse or vicious “arguments” of the sort that the average person cannot adequately react to. As a result, the liberal either answers sharply, causing a scandal and getting himself labeled a “boor” by the rest of the brigade, or else he starts to make arguments against the obvious absurdities, to which his opponents pay no attention, but simply ridicule him and put forth other similar arguments."[2]

Making personally offensive comments. Tendency to accuse their opponents of being insane during arguments.

Remarkable ability to reveal personal information about their opponents and their quotes from old postings, sometimes more than a year old.

Teamwork. "They unwaveringly support each other in discussions, ask each other leading questions, put fine points on each other’s answers, and even pretend not to know each other. If an opponent starts to be hounded, this hounding invariably becomes a team effort, involving all of the three to twenty nicknames that invariably are present on any political forum 24 hours a day."[2]

Appealing to the Administration. The members of teams often "write mass collective complaints about their opponents to the editors, site administrators, or the electronic “complaints book”, demanding that one or another posting or whole discussion thread they don’t like be removed, or calling for the banning of individuals they find problematic."[2]

Destruction of inconvenient forums. For example, on the site of the Moscow News, all critics of Putin and the FSB "were suddenly and without any explanation banned from all discussions, despite their having broken none of the site’s rules of conduct. All the postings of this group of readers, going back a year and a half, were erased by the site administrator."[2]

Criticism

There is difference between "dislike of hegemonic policy of the United States" at Russian forums and "quite friendly attitude towards usual Americans". Aggression and xenophobia doesn't characterize one side but is a common place of polemics, well met not only among Russian patriots, but among Russian emigrants from US, Israel, or other countries as well.

Change of attitude of virtual masses in 1998-1999 could be caused by Russian financial collapse which "crowned liberal decade", rather than "mysterious bad guys".

Authors exclude from their interpretation of events all other hypotheses, such as internet activity of a group of some "skinheads", nazbols; or hackers able to get IP addresses of their opponents.

Officeers of GRU or FSB have more topical problems, than "comparing virtual penises" with liberals and emigrants.[9]Yusupovskiy concluded that

"We would never make our country's military organizations and security services work under the rule of law and legal control, if won't learn to recognize rationally and objectively their necessity and usefulness for the country, state, society and citizens. Sweeping defamation and intentional discreditation with the help of "arguments", which are obviously false, only contribute to the extrusion of security services outside of rule of law and instigates them to chaos".[9]

Paul Goble, director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, claims "the Kremlin has dispatched its own “agents of influence” to political forums on the Internet both to portray itself as having more support than it has and to suggest that its opponents who would like to see a more democratic Russia with closer ties to the West are an ever more marginal group"[11]

Public perception in Russia

In 2007 sociological analysis of big groups in Russian society published at Russian resource RIO-Center, it's mentioned that idea of existence of web-brigades is a widespread conspiracy theory in RuNet. Authors say "it's difficult to say whether hypothesis of existence of web-brigades corresponds to reality", "web brigades are conspiracy theory" but acknowledge that the users profess views on the existence of "web-brigades". [12]

"We are losing in the Internet in that respect. It is always easier to break down things than to do something positive. What you are doing are jokes and minor infractions. Not only methods, but also goals must be radical. We must blow this romantics out of them [our opponents]. It is important not only to protect the authorities - this is understood, but we need to attract young people who can work creatively in the Internet. This is an important communication place of young people. Make them interested in conversations with you."[14]

Internet brigades in Russian literature

The alleged FSB activities on the Internet have been described in the short story "Anastasya" by Russian writer Grigory Svirsky, who was interested in the moral aspects of their work.[15] He wrote: "It seems that offending, betraying, or even "murdering" people in the virtual space is easy. This is like killing an enemy in a video game: one does not see a disfigured body or the eyes of the person who is dying right in front of you. However, the human soul lives by its own basic laws that force it to pay the price for the virtual crime in his real life".[3]

Outside Russia

Russian brigades in the Polish Internet

Russian "Internet brigades" reportedly appeared in Poland in 2005. According to claims of anonymous "Polish experts on Russian affairs", reported by the Polish newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny, "at least a dozen active Russian agents work in Poland, also investigating the Polish Internet. They are claimed to scrutinize Polish websites (like those supporting Belarusian opposition), and also to perform such actions, as—for instance—contributing to Internet forums on large portals (like Gazeta.pl, Onet.pl, WP.pl). Labeled as Polish Internet users, they incite anti-Semitic or anti-Ukrainian discussions or disavow articles published on the web."[16]

Internet propaganda teams in mainland China

It has been reported[1] that in 2005, departments of provincial and municipal governments in mainland China began creating teams of Internet commentators from propaganda and police departments and offering them classes in Marxism, propaganda techniques, and the Internet. They are reported to guide discussion on public bulletin boards away from politically sensitive topics by posting opinions anonymously or under false names. "They are actually hiring staff to curse online", said Liu Di, a Chinese student who was arrested for posting her comments in blogs.

Netherlands

It was reported that Dutch police have set up an Internet Brigade to fight cybercrime. Among its planned actions are to infiltrate internet newsgroups and discussion forums for intelligence gathering, to make pseudo-purchase and to provide services.[17].

Internet brigades in Wikipedia?

A number of publications suggested that intelligence agents may have infiltrated Wikipedia to remove undesirable information [18] The design and application of WikiScanner technology proved such suspicions to be well founded, although it remains unknown how many agents from around the world operate in Wikipedia [19][20][21][22][23]